Mills, presses, crushers, and other crushing devices used to grind material often include a crushing body or multiple crushing bodies that are configured to impact material to crush or the material. Often the crushing bodies are configured to grind the material between a surface of the crushing body and a table, wall, or other surface. Examples of such crushing devices may be appreciated from U.S. Pat. Nos. 252,755, 1,225,061, 1,589,302, 3,955,766, 3,964,717, 4,369,926, 4,485,974, 4,582,260, 5,203,513, 5,823,450, and 6,523,767. As another example, roller presses may have one or more rollers configured to impact material to grind the material. Each roller may include a wear surface. The wear surface may be attached to the roller. For instance, the wear surface of the roller may be welded to the roller.
A wear surface typically experiences wear as material is crushed by the wear surface. After a period of time, the wear surface may experience wear sufficiently that it is unable to crush material or experiences a great reduction in crushing ability. For example, portions of the wear surface may erode or become broken during use and subsequently requires replacement or repair.
Some wearable surfaces used in crushing devices include hexagonal tiles, such as the tiles disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,033. A tiled surface can include tiles that have gaps between the tiles. The tiles are affixed to a base material and are harder than the base material. Such tiles are often costly to process due to the size of the equipment necessary to make such products. Further, such tiled wearable surfaces are usually not capable of being repaired while the wearable surface is positioned in a plant or processing line for grinding material. The inability to conduct in-situ repairs on such products can be a major hindrance for a manufacturer and can greatly increase the cost of maintaining or repairing such devices.
Other wearable surfaces used in crushing devices may be appreciated from U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,477. Such wearable surfaces include insert members embedded in a surface of a cylindrical press roll. A binding ring may be used to attach the inserts to the press roll. The insert members may project radially into the surface of the roll. The insert members are configured to crush material. Rollers with such a wear surface may require a relatively intensive amount of labor to embed the insert members into the surface of a roller. The lead times for manufacturing such products is also relatively high. Further, serial production is difficult for such rollers. These types of rollers may also have a relatively limited capacity for in-situ repair, such as repair while the rollers are on equipment in a production line of a manufacturing facility.
A new wearable surface is needed that may permit in-situ repairs and reduce the cost of producing wearable surfaces for crushing bodies of a crushing device. Preferably, such a wearable surface is able to permit in-situ repairs that can take place while equipment is in a product line of a manufacturing facility and can permit relatively short lead times for manufacturing.